


Wild Heart

by orphan_account



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Heavy Angst, abducted mulder, spoilers for everything pre this is not happening, txf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 02:16:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6176338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She tells him stories, remembering that somebody once told her that an unborn baby hears everything you say. She’s hoping that’s true. Hoping that someone hears her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wild Heart

She’s taken to calling the baby Fox in her head. 

Her Mother tells her it’s definitely a boy, the way her belly sits, not that she believes in that sort of thing. She worries that she’s going to look for her whole life and never see Mulder again. She worries that this time she’ll fail and they won’t find each other. That the baby will be born and grow up and not know to miss him. It would be better that he didn’t, fairer, but she can’t stand the idea. She tells him stories, remembering that somebody once told her that an unborn baby hears everything you say. She’s hoping that’s true. Hoping that someone hears her. 

“Today I dialled his phone to ask if he’d seen my spare pair of glasses anywhere. I even pressed the call button. I’ve never missed him for this long before. I hope you never know what that’s like. I want you to hear how his voice sounds. I want to hear how his voice sounds.” 

She’s driving again. 

Finishing a case means time to look. Doggett handles the reports. He’s good that way, never questioning the way she rushes off the moment an arrest is made. The highway is ghostly empty; the only other vehicles are occasional trucks. She imagines that they’re carrying bees and shivers. 

“We met a little girl once, named Emily. He didn’t know I was there but I heard him singing to her one night through the door. I wish you’d heard it, Fox, he was singing Silent Night. I already knew that he’d be a great dad but that’s when I first wondered if he already wanted to be one.” 

She’s going everywhere abductions have taken place in North America. Everywhere recorded in their files. It’s not unusual for abductees to be dropped off in places with high abduction rates, like some kind of train stop. Sometimes people get on. Sometimes they get off. She doesn’t let herself wonder whether she’s looking for Mulder or a cadaver when she’s trampling around forests in the dead of night. 

Skyland Mountain had been the worst. She’d stood staring up into the twinkling stars and pictured Mulder there doing the same all those years ago. She’d thought that if she waited long enough they might take her again and they could be together. She’d prayed for hours, until her fingers were blue and her face felt swollen. Until light flooded her and she’d thought truly for one second that her prayers were being answered and he’d be dropped gently from the heavens and gulp in big breaths of air. The park ranger had raced to her and ushered her back into her car, muttering about what was she thinking and had she lost her mind. 

Not my mind, she’d thought. I’ve lost something else. 

She’d spent a full week in Oregon after he’d been taken, despite knowing deep down it was useless. When Skinner begged her to come back to D.C. she’d cried and told him that she had to be there because it would make up for not being there when it mattered.  
She starts to sing, her voice soft and aching. All is calm. All is bright. The trucks and her son keep her company. She never stops glancing at the sky. 

“It’s my job to get the room keys,” She whispers into the cool night air. 

“It’s his job to get the bags.” She’s making a list of things that are true. 

She’s walking through a paddock, her feet unstable on the slippery grass. She already knows he’s not here. The ground is flat. You can see for miles. Still, her legs need stretching. Still, she wants to make sure. 

“Your uncle hates him. Your Nanna loves him. He get’s to airports early because he likes having time to read the paper, I think he just likes watching planes take off.” 

Three people reported abductions in this field. One had been found here. She’d allowed herself too much hope. Please let me find you in a field on a Thursday night. The land is too flat, the grass too short from the grazing cattle. The absence of anything is too obvious. Finally she gives up, turning back to where the car waits. 

“He told me that I saved the world once. He told me that he loved me. Once we watched two bright lights chasing each other through the sky.” 

The car is still running. She should be tired but isn’t and decides to drive home, not wanting to ask for one room key, not believing that she’d even be able to sleep anymore without the bubbling of a fish tank. The sun comes up and slowly more vehicles join her on the road. 

She throws up in Mulder’s bathroom when she finally gets home. 

Grief tastes like acid. 

She uses his shampoo and traces patterns on her belly in the shower with soapy fingers, imagining they aren’t hers. 

“He drums to songs on the steering wheel when he drives.” That’s another one. 

It occurs to her that she should pick up more cases at work so that the shrinking list of abduction sites lasts, so that she has something tangible to do for a little longer. She doesn’t want to think about what to do when the list runs out. Maybe she’ll keep going back, over and over for the rest of her life. Just making sure. Her days will pass driving the same roads to find the same dots on a map. 

“He takes his coffee black but his tea with milk.” 

She curls onto the couch and prays. She doesn’t use words anymore. She just squeezes her eyes closed and focuses on the aching in her heart and figures that God will understand. 

“Fox, this is important.” She whispers to her belly, “He believes that we find each other. That our souls are together again and again in all of our lives.” She trembles and looks into the stars on the backs of her eyelids. “I’m not done with him in this life.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking about Scully looking for Mulder between cases and then this happened. I hope it's okay. Shout out to these characters for ruining my life and breaking my heart all the time.


End file.
